S tories on the page are so beautifully neat. All that

lovely black print; those lovely straight lines and

paragraphs and pages. But stories are living things,

creatures that move and grow in the imaginations of writer

and reader. They must be solid and touchable just like the

land, and must have fluid half-known depths just like the sea.

These stories take place in a real world – the streets in which

I grew, the fields and beaches over which I walked. People

I know appear in them. But in fiction, real worlds merge

with dreamed worlds. Real people walk with ghosts and

figments. Earthly truth goes hand-in-hand with watery lies.

“

”

H A L F A C RE AT U RE

F RO M T H E S E A

A Life in Stories

DAVID ALMONDillustrated by Eleanor Taylor

ALSO BY DAVID ALMOND

The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon

The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas

Clay

Counting Stars

The Fire-Eaters

Heaven Eyes

Kit’s Wilderness

Mouse Bird Snake Wolf

My Dad’s a Birdman

My Name Is Mina

The Savage

Secret Heart

Skellig

Slog’s Dad

The Tightrope Walkers

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean

For Tim and Rachel

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

First published 2014 by Walker Books Ltd 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Introduction and story introductions © 2014 David Almond

“Slog’s Dad” © 2006 David Almond (First published in So, What Kept You?)

“May Malone” © 2008 David Almond (First published in The Children’s Hours)

“When God Came to Cathleen’s Garden” © 2009, 2010 David Almond (First published in Sideshow: Ten Original Tales of Freaks,

Illusionists and Other Matters Odd and Magical)

“The Missing Link” © 2008, 2014 David Almond (First published in The Times)

“Harry Miller’s Run” © 2008 David Almond (First published in conjunction with Great North Run Culture)

“Half a Creature from the Sea” © 2007 David Almond (First published in Click)

“Joe Quinn’s Poltergeist” © 2014 David Almond

“Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads” © 2009 David Almond (First published in Free? Stories Celebrating Human Rights)

Illustrations © 2014 Eleanor Taylor

The right of David Almond and Eleanor Taylor to be identified as author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by them in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This book has been typeset in Bembo and Priori Sans OT

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4063-5434-8

www.walker.co.uk

C O N T E N T S

11

21

41

59

83

105

137

167

207

things I can hardly

remember,

things I’ve

been told about,

things that are like

fragments of a dream.

“start

with

’ll I

12

DAVID ALMOND

13

INTRODUCTION

shop. Down onto the steep, curving High Street,

lined with a butcher’s, grocer’s, tailor’s, pubs. A

pink pig’s head would be grinning out from Myers’

window. There’d be boxes of bright fruit stacked

outside Bamling’s. A great cod fish, bigger than

a boy, would lie on the marble slab outside the

fishmonger’s. You could smell the fish and chips

from Fosters’, the beer from the open windows

of the Half Way House, oil and rust from Howie’s

cluttered junkyard behind its swinging stable door.

We’d pass by the cracked pale faces and legs of the

mannequins of Shepherd’s department store. All

the way, Mam’d be calling out greetings to family

and neighbours. They’d be leaning down to grin and

coo at me, maybe to slip a coin into my little hand.

Always, above the rooftops, the thin steeple of our

church, St Patrick’s, pointed to the blue.

Halfway down the street, my mother would turn

into a narrow alleyway and carry me into Amos’s

printing shop. There’d been a few generations of

printers in our family, and Amos was the latest.

He printed the local newspaper in that dark small

place, on a pair of ancient printing machines. Do

I grew up in a town called Felling-on-Tyne. My first

home was an upstairs flat in White’s Buildings, a

cluster of houses at the edge of the town’s main

square. It had high white walls and wide dark doors,

and a tiny kitchen where the sink perched on a

timber frame. The tin bath hung on the kitchen

wall. Steep, crumbling steps led to a small back

yard and the outside toilet. My mother used to

say that before she opened the door to any room,

she’d tap on it to make sure the mice scattered to

their holes in the skirting boards and floors. There

were hundreds of them, she told me. Thousands!

I remember the smell of damp, of the outside loo.

Dust cascaded through the shafts of light that

poured through the narrow kitchen windows. Dead

flies clustered on dangling fly papers. Sirens blared

from the factories by the river, foghorns hooted

from the distant sea. There were four of us then:

Mam, Dad, my brother Colin, and me.

Mam said that I was just a few months old when she

first took me to visit my Uncle Amos. She’d wheel

me in my pushchair through the square, past the

Jubilee pub, Dragone’s coffee house, Myers’ pork

14

DAVID ALMOND

15

INTRODUCTION

ambitions. “Yes,” he said, “do that!” He also told

me, “Don’t let your writing separate you from the

people and places that you love.”

White’s Buildings was eventually classified as a slum

and was demolished. We moved to a brand-new

council estate, The Grange, beside the brand-new

bypass on the eastern edge of town. I went to St

John’s Catholic primary school, a sombre stone-

built establishment next to the river. Amos closed

the printing shop and moved away, but the sign

above the alleyway remained for years:

I passed beneath it a thousand times as I continued

to grow.

I played with my friends on the fields above the

town. I roamed further, to the hills beyond the

fields, where there were abandoned coal mines

and spoil heaps, tussocky paddocks with ponies in

them, newt ponds, ruined stables. From up there,

you could see the whole town sloping away: the

streets leading to the square, the factories below

that, the river lined with shipyards, the city of

I remember it? I like to think I do, but I guess I only

really remember my mother’s words. She told a tale

that one day when she was in there, with me lying

in her arms, Amos pulled a lever, and the printing

machines began to clatter and turn, and the pages

of the newspaper began to stream out from them,

and I started to wriggle and jump in her arms, and

to point and giggle at the pages. Just as a baby’s

eyes are caught by flashing lights or flying birds, my

eyes were caught by print – and I’d be in love with it

for evermore. Maybe I began to be a writer that day

in that little printing shop, a time I can’t remember,

when I was a few months old.

Amos was a writer as well as a printer. He wrote

poems, stories, novels, plays. At family parties,

after a couple of drinks, he’d take a piece of paper

from his pocket and read a poem to us. Some would

roll their eyes and giggle, but I loved him for it.

I had an uncle who was a writer; I could be the same.

None of his work was ever published or performed,

but it didn’t matter to him. He kept on writing

for the love of it, and for his family and friends.

I was just a boy when I told him shyly of my own

16

DAVID ALMOND INTRODUCTION

all in some way connected to that ‘ordinary’ place.

I try to do what many writers have done before me:

show that ordinary places can be extraordinary.

Newcastle with its bridges and towers and steeples.

To the north, the distant bulges of the Cheviots in a

haze. To the west, the hills of County Durham, the

pitheads and winding gear of the coal mines. To the

south, more fields, lanes, hawthorn hedges, then

Sunderland, then the towns of Teesside on the far

horizon. To the east, the dark North Sea. It seemed

that much of the world, in all its variety, was visible

from this little place.

I started to scribble stories of my own. I read books

from the local library. I dreamed of coming back

to this library one day in the future, to find books

with my own name on them standing on the shelves.

Once or twice I dared to admit to others that I

wanted to be a writer. I remember one day getting

the response, ‘But you’re just an ordinary kid. And

you come from ordinary little Felling. What on

earth will you write about?’

As time has gone on, I’ve found myself writing

more and more about that little place. Many of

my stories spring from it. They use its landscape,

its language, its people, and turn it into fiction –

half imaginary, half real. The stories in this book are

”

21

“T he story of ‘Slog’s Dad’ takes place right

in the heart of the town, in Felling Square.

This was a small, low-walled area with an

ancient fountain and water trough at the centre.

There were benches where folk sat to while away

the day, to take a rest after walking up the steep

High Street or to sit and wait for the Black Bull or

the Jubilee to open. On one side of the square was

Ray Lough’s barber’s, with its plate-glass window,

its short line of chairs. Ray would have no truck with

modern styles. Boys might go in asking for a James

Dean or a Beatles cut but they’d all get the same:

short back and sides finished with lotion slapped

on; the kind that set hard as soon as it hit the open

air. Just next door was my grandfather’s betting

shop. The name in the window – John Foster

Barber – caused some men to walk in for a haircut,

but instead they’d find my grandfather puffing on

22

DAVID ALMOND

23

SLOG’S DAD

Hell to burn for all eternity.) Sometimes, when the

sun shone down and the sky was blue and the river

glittered far below, the larks singing over the high

fields, Heaven didn’t seem too far away. We were

constantly reminded of its inhabitants, too. There

were statues of Jesus and his mother, and of saints

and angels in St Patrick’s. We all had prayer books

and rosary beads and little statues and pictures in

our homes.

Cheery priests were familiar figures in the streets

– off to visit the sick, to comfort the bereaved or

to have a glass of whisky with a parishioner. Tramps

were often seen too. There was one in particular

who lived, it was said, somewhere in the hills above

town. No one knew his name, or where he’d come

from. He was a silent, swiftly walking man with

flaxen hair. He seemed at ease, untroubled by the

world, and he was a romantic figure to boys like

me. To live a life of freedom in the open air! Who

wouldn’t desire such a life? Sometimes I’d see him

sitting alone on a bench in the square, just as Slog’s

dad does in the story. I longed to try to talk to him,

but I never did.

This story came from a fragment from the

his pipe behind the counter, men standing around

earnestly reading Sporting Life, and crackly radio

reports of horse race results coming from speakers

on the walls. The square, and the High Street,

and many of the shops and pubs, still exist. Not

Lough’s, and not the betting shop. My Uncle

Maurice took it over when my grandfather retired,

but then Ladbrokes opened in the square and

Maurice moved the shop to Hebburn, a few miles

away, to catch the custom of shipyard workers. But

shipbuilding declined then quickly crashed, and the

betting shop was one of the many businesses that

went down with it.

Myers’ pork shop sold the best pork pies, the

best pork sandwiches, and the best saveloy dips

in the area. Saveloys are a kind of sausage. They

seemed to my friends and me to be the height of

deliciousness, especially inside a soft bread roll

with stuffing, onions and mustard and dipped into

a shallow tray of Myers’ special gravy. A saveloy dip

with everything: a taste of Heaven!

I was a Catholic, like many of my friends. We were

taught to believe that when good people died, they

went to be with God. (The bad, of course, went to

DAVID ALMOND

25

Spring had come. I’d been running around all day

with Slog and we were starving. We were crossing the

square to Myers’ pork shop. Slog stopped dead in his

tracks.

“What’s up?” I said.

He nodded across the square.

“Look,” he said.

“Look at what?”

“It’s me dad,” he whispered.

“Your dad?”

“Aye.”

notebook of the great short-story writer Raymond

Carver, which I used as an inspiration for a tale of

my own. One line jumped out at me: ‘I’ve got how

much longer?’ As soon as I wrote it down in my own

notebook, ‘Slog’s Dad’ sprang to life. I switched on

the computer, began to write. There was a boy called

Davie, walking across the square with his friend

Slog. There was a bloke on the bench. There was

Myers’ pork shop with its delicious saveloys… ”

26

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

27

SLOG’S DAD

Slog’s dad had been a binman, a skinny bloke with

a creased face and a greasy f lat cap. He was always

puffing on a Woodbine. He hung on to the back of

the bin wagon as it lurched through the estate, jumped

off and on, slung the bins over his shoulder, tipped the

muck into the back. He was forever singing hymns –

“Faith of Our Fathers”, “Hail Glorious Saint Patrick”,

stuff like that.

“Here he comes again,” my mam would say as he

bashed the bins and belted out “Oh, Sacred Heart” at

eight o’clock on a Thursday morning.

But she’d be smiling, because everybody liked Slog’s

dad, Joe Mickley, a daft and canny soul.

First sign of his illness was just a bit of a limp: then

Slog came to school one day and said, “Me dad’s got a

black spot on his big toenail.”

“Just like Treasure Island, eh?” I said.

“What’s it mean?” he said.

I was going to say death and doom, but I said, “He

could try asking the doctor.”

“He has asked the doctor.”

Slog looked down. I could smell his dad on him, the

scent of rotten rubbish that was always on him. They

lived just down the street from us, and the whole house

I just looked at him.

“That bloke there,” he said.

“What bloke where?”

“Him on the bench. Him with the cap on. Him

with the stick.”

I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand and

tried to see. The bloke had his hands resting on the top

of the stick. He had his chin resting on his hands. His

hair was long and tangled and his clothes were tattered

and worn, like he was poor or like he’d been on a long

journey. His face was in the shadow of the brim of his

cap, but you could see that he was smiling.

“Slogger, man,” I said. “Your dad’s dead.”

“I know that, Davie. But it’s him. He’s come back

again, like he said he would. In the spring.”

He raised his arm and waved.

“Dad!” he shouted. “Dad!”

The bloke waved back.

“See?” said Slog. “Howay.”

He tugged my arm.

“No,” I whispered. “No!”

And I yanked myself free and I went into Myers’,

and Slog ran across the square to his dad.

* * *

28

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

29

SLOG’S DAD

If anybody asked was he looking for work, he’d

laugh.

“Work? I can hardly bliddy walk.”

And he’d start in on “Faith of Our Fathers” and

everybody’d smile.

Then he got a black spot on his other big toenail, and

they took him away again, and they started chopping at

his other leg, and Slog said it was like living in a horror

picture.

When Slog’s dad came home next, he spent his

days parked in a wheelchair in his garden. He didn’t

bother with tin legs: just pyjama bottoms folded over

his stumps. He was quieter. He sat day after day in

the summer sun among his roses, staring out at the

pebbledashed walls and the red roofs and the empty

sky. The Woodbines dangled in his f ingers, “Oh,

Sacred Heart” drifted gently from his lips. Mrs

Mickley brought him cups of tea, glasses of beer,

Woodbines. Once I stood with Mam at the window

and watched Mrs Mickley stroke her husband’s head

and gently kiss his cheek.

“She’s telling him he’s going to get better,” said

Mam.

We saw the smile growing on Joe Mickley’s face.

had that smell in it, no matter how much Mrs Mickley

washed and scrubbed. Slog’s dad knew it. He said it

was the smell of the earth. He said there’d be nowt like

it in Heaven.

“The doctor said it’s nowt,” Slog said. “But he’s

staying in bed today, and he’s going to hospital

tomorrow. What’s it mean, Davie?”

“How should I know?” I said.

I shrugged.

“It’s just a spot, man, Slog!” I said.

Everything happened fast after that. They took the

big toe off, then the foot, then the leg to halfway up the

thigh. Slog said his mother reckoned his dad had caught

some germs from the bins. My mother said it was all the

Woodbines he puffed. Whatever it was, it seemed they

stopped it. They fitted a tin leg on him and sent him

home. It was the end of the bins, of course.

He took to sitting on the little garden wall outside

the house. Mrs Mickley often sat with him and they’d

be smelling their roses and nattering and smiling and

swigging tea and puffing Woodbines. He used to show

off his new leg to passers-by.

“I’ll get the old one back when I’m in Heaven,” he

said.

30

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

31

SLOG’S DAD

“It’s alreet,” he whispered. “I know you divent want

to come too close.”

He looked down to where his legs should be.

“They tell us if I get to Heaven I’ll get them back

again,” he said. “What d’you think of that, Davie?”

I shrugged.

“Dunno, Mr Mickley,” I said.

“Do you reckon I’ll be able to walk back here if I do

get them back again?”

“Dunno, Mr Mickley.”

I started to back away.

“I’ll walk straight out them pearly gates,” he said.

He laughed. “I’ll follow the smells. There’s no smells in

Heaven. I’ll follow the bliddy smells right back here to

the lovely earth.”

He looked at me.

“What d’you think of that?” he said.

Just a week later, the garden was empty. We saw

Doctor Molly going in, then Father O’Mahoney,

and just as dusk was coming on, Mr Blenkinsop, the

undertaker.

The week after the funeral, I was heading out of the

estate for school with Slog, and he told me, “Dad said

he’s coming back.”

“That’s love,” said Mam. “True love.”

Slog’s dad still joked and called out to anybody

passing by.

“Walk?” he’d say. “Man, I cannot even bliddy hop.”

“They can hack your body to a hundred bits,” he’d

say. “But they cannot hack your soul.”

We saw him shrinking. Slog told me he’d heard his

mother whispering about his dad’s fingers coming off.

He told me about Mrs Mickley lifting his dad from

the chair each night, laying him down, whispering her

goodnights, like he was a little bairn. Slog said that

some nights when he was really scared, he got into bed

beside them.

“But it just makes it worse,” he said. He cried. “I’m

bigger than me dad, Davie. I’m bigger than me bliddy

dad!”

And he put his arms around me and put his head on

my shoulder and cried.

“Slog, man,” I said as I tugged away. “Howay,

Slogger, man!”

One day late in August, Slog’s dad caught me looking.

He waved me to him. I went to him slowly. He

winked.

32

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

33

SLOG’S DAD

“Aye-aye, Davie,” he said.

“Aye,” I muttered.

“Saveloy, I suppose? With everything?”

“Aye. Aye.”

I looked out over the pig’s head. Slog was with the

bloke, looking down at him, talking to him. I saw him

lean down to touch the bloke.

“And a dip?” said Billy.

“Aye,” I said.

He plunged the sandwich into a trough of gravy.

“Bliddy lovely,” he said. “Though I say it myself.

A shilling to you, sir.”

I paid him but I couldn’t go out through the door.

The sandwich was hot. The gravy was dripping to my

feet.

Billy laughed.

“Penny for them,” he said.

I watched Slog get onto the bench beside the bloke.

“Do you believe there’s life after death?” I said.

Billy laughed.

“Now there’s a question for a butcher!” he said.

A skinny old woman came in past me.

“What can I do you for, pet?” said Billy. “See you,

Davie.”

“Slogger, man,” I said.

“His last words to me. ‘Watch for me in the spring,’

he said.”

“Slogger, man. It’s just cos he was…”

“What?”

I gritted my teeth.

“Dying, man!”

I didn’t mean to yell at him, but the traffic was

thundering past us on the bypass. I got hold of his arm

and we stopped.

“Bliddy dying,” I said more softly.

“Me mam says that and all,” said Slog. “She says

we’ll have to wait. But I cannot wait till I’m in Heaven,

Davie. I want to see him here one more time.”

Then he stared up at the sky.

“Dad,” he whispered. “Dad!”

I got into Myers’ pork shop, and sausages and bacon

and black pudding and joints and pies sat in neat piles

in the window. A pink pig’s head with its hair scorched

off and a grin on its face gazed out at the square. There

was a bucket of bones for dogs and a bucket of blood

on the f loor. The marble counters and Billy Myers’

face were gleaming.

34

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

35

SLOG’S DAD

“Bliddy lovely. You got owt to drink?”

“No,” I said.

“Ha. He has got a tongue!”

“He looks a bit different,” said Slog. “But that’s just

cos he’s been…”

“Transfigured,” said the bloke.

“Aye,” said Slog. “Transfigured. Can I show him

your legs, Dad?”

The bloke laughed gently. He bit his saveloy

sandwich. His eyes glittered as he watched me.

“Aye,” he said. “Gan on. Show him me legs, son.”

And Slog knelt at his feet and rolled the bloke’s

tattered trouser bottoms up and showed the bloke’s

dirty socks and dirty shins.

“See?” he whispered.

He touched the bloke’s legs with his fingers.

“Aren’t they lovely?” he said. “Touch them, Davie.”

I didn’t move.

“Gan on,” said the bloke. “Touch them, Davie.”

His voice got colder.

“Do it for Slogger, Davie,” he said.

I crouched, I touched, I felt the hair and the skin and

the bones and muscles underneath. I recoiled; I stood

up again.

He laughed.

“Kids!” he said.

Slog looked that happy as I walked towards them.

He was leaning on the bloke and the bloke was leaning

back on the bench, grinning at the sky. Slog made a fist

and a face of joy when he saw me.

“It’s Dad, Davie!” he said. “See? I told you.”

I stood in front of them.

“You remember Davie, Dad,” said Slog.

The bloke looked at me. He looked nothing like the

Joe Mickley I used to know. His face was filthy but it

was smooth and his eyes were shining bright.

“Course I do,” he said. “Nice to see you, son.”

Slog laughed.

“Davie’s a bit scared,” he said.

“No wonder,” said the bloke. “That looks very

tasty.”

I held the sandwich out to him.

He took it, opened it and smelt it, looked at the

meat and pease pudding and stuffing and mustard and

gravy. He closed his eyes and smiled, then lifted it to

his mouth.

“Saveloy with everything,” he said. He licked the

gravy from his lips, wiped his chin with his hand.

36

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

37

SLOG’S DAD

“This is very special,” he said. “Very rare. They let it

happen cos you’re a very rare and special lad.”

He looked into the sky and talked into the sky.

“How much longer have I got?” he said, then he

nodded. “Aye. OK. OK.”

He shrugged and looked back at Slog.

“No,” he said. “Time’s pressing. I cannot do it, son.”

There were tears in Slog’s eyes.

“She misses you that much, Dad,” he said.

“Aye. I know.” The bloke looked into the sky again.

“How much longer?” he said.

He took Slog in his arms.

“Come here,” he whispered.

I watched them hold each other tight.

“You can tell her about me,” said the bloke. “You

can tell her I love her and miss her and all.” He looked

at me over Slog’s shoulder. “And so can Davie, your

best mate. Can’t you, Davie? Can’t you?”

“Aye,” I muttered.

Then the bloke stood up. Slog still clung to him.

“Can I come with you, Dad?” he said.

The bloke smiled.

“You know you can’t, son.”

“What did you do?” I said.

“It’s true, see?” said Slog. “He got them back in

Heaven.”

“What d’you think of that, then, Davie?” said the

bloke.

Slog smiled.

“He thinks they’re bliddy lovely, Dad.”

Slog stroked the bloke’s legs one more time then

rolled the trousers down again.

“What’s Heaven like, Dad?” said Slog.

“Hard to describe, son.”

“Please, Dad.”

“It’s like bright and peaceful, and there’s God and

the angels and all that…” The bloke looked at his

sandwich. “It’s like having all the saveloy dips you ever

want. With everything, every time.”

“It must be great.”

“Oh, aye, son. It’s dead canny.”

“Are you coming to see Mam, Dad?” he said.

The bloke pursed his lips and sucked in air and gazed

into the sky.

“Dunno. Dunno if I’ve got the time, son.”

Slog’s face fell.

The bloke reached out and stroked Slog’s cheek.

38

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

39

SLOG’S DAD

The bloke laughed.

“Ha! Bliddy ha!”

He held Slog by the shoulders.

“Now, son,” he said. “You got to stand here and

watch me go and you mustn’t follow.”

“I won’t, Dad,” whispered Slog.

“And you must always remember me.”

“I will, Dad.”

“And me, you and your lovely mam’ll be together

again one day in Heaven.”

“I know that, Dad. I love you, Dad.”

“And I love you.”

And the bloke kissed Slog, and twisted his face at

me, then turned away. He started singing “Faith of Our

Fathers”. He walked across the square, past Myers’ pork

shop, and turned down onto the High Street. We ran

after him then and we looked down the High Street

past the people and the cars, but there was no sign of

him, and there never would be again.

We stood there speechless. Billy Myers came to the

doorway of the pork shop with a bucket of bones in his

hand and watched us.

“That was me dad,” said Slog.

“Aye?” said Billy.

“Eh?” said the bloke.

“What job did you do?”

The bloke looked at me, dead cold.

“I was a binman, Davie,” he said. “I used to stink

but I didn’t mind. And I followed the stink to get me

here.”

He cupped Slog’s face in his hands.

“Isn’t that right, son?”

“Aye,” said Slog.

“So what’s Slog’s mother called?” I said.

“Eh?”

“Your wife. What’s her name?”

The bloke looked at me. He looked at Slog. He

pushed the last bit of sandwich into his mouth and

chewed. A sparrow hopped close to our feet, trying to

get at the crumbs. The bloke licked his lips, wiped his

chin, stared into the sky.

“Please, Dad,” whispered Slog.

The bloke shrugged. He gritted his teeth and sighed

and looked at me so cold and at Slog so gentle.

“Slog’s mother,” he said. “My wife…” He shrugged

again. “She’s called Mary.”

“Oh, Dad!” said Slog and his face was transfigured

by joy. “Oh, Dad!”

HALF A CREATURE FROM THE SEA

41

“We were kids. There were always

tales of ghouls and ghosts and

monsters going around. In my first

school, St John’s, a spooky stone place down by

the Tyne, there were fiends waiting in the deep,

dark cupboard just past the staffroom door. The

ghosts of dead pit men and pit boys, killed in

the Felling Pit disaster of 1812, could be seen

during winter dusks in the school yard. A madman

lived in that abandoned paint works by the river.

Some folk had tails hidden beneath their clothes.

Strange creatures were said to have been born

in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital; creatures that

could never be allowed out into the world – half

human, half beast, born by weird couplings. When

I camped with pals in their gardens – with Tex Flynn

or Graham and Charlie Mein – we quaked as we

whispered to each other about the witches and

“Aye. He come back, like he said he would, in the

spring.”

“That’s good,” said Billy. “Come and have a dip,

son. With everything.”

42

DAVID ALMOND

43

MAY MALONE

position. She was already headed for the fire. Not

surprising, then, that there were rumours about her

life, her child … about her monster.

May lives in the dark terraced streets at the

lower end of Felling, below the railway line.

Norman lives in the new flats by Felling Square,

Sir Godfrey Thomson Court, where my family

lived for several years. I took Norman’s surname,

Trench (which I like a lot!) from Richard Trench,

a nineteenth-century archbishop who wrote a

strange and strangely wonderful book called Notes

on the Miracles of Our Lord. Trench’s book is one

that I keep around me on the shelves in the shed

where I write. Another book that’s always near by

is a collection of William Blake’s poems. This story

was written for a radio series called Blake’s Doors

of Perception. I was invited to take a line or two

from Blake and use it as an inspiration, so I chose

his poem “The Garden of Love”, which contains

these lines:

And Priests in black gowns were walking their

rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

demons that waited in the darkness just beyond the

thin canvas wall.

Our imaginings were intensified in church,

especially during mission week. This happened

every year or two, when teams of priests and fierce

monks were sent to us. They roamed the streets

and glared. They came to our homes to check up

on our attendance at Communion or confession.

They stood in the pulpit in a crowded St Patrick’s

and terrified us with detailed and gory descriptions

of hellfire, burning flesh, demons, brimstone, red-

hot pokers.

“Beware!” they snarled, gripping the pulpit edge

and leaning towards us. “The creatures of Satan

truly do walk among us. Perhaps they are with us

now! Be alert! Keep away from them! Avoid all sin.

Keep your mind on God!”

In this story, May Malone is lapsed – she used

to be a Catholic, but she’s lost the faith and has

left the Church. Just like one of my friends did in

real life, when we were eighteen, May stood up in

church one day, yelled at the priest that he was a

bliddy liar, and stormed out, never to return. To

believers, May had put herself into a very perilous

DAVID ALMOND

45

The story was that May Malone had a monster in her

house. She kept it in chains. If you went round to the

back of the house and put your ear to the wall, you’d

hear it groaning. You’d hear it howling at night if you

listened hard. There were tales about May and a priest

from Blyth. There was a baby, it was said, but the baby

was horrible because it was born from such a sin. Even

weirder tales were whispered. The Devil himself had

come to May and it was the son of Satan living in her

house. She’d been with horses, with dogs, with goats.

Anyway, whatever it was you’d risk your body, your

There are more echoes of Blake in some of the

sentences. I like to think that, by the end, Norman’s

own doors of perception have started to open. ”